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Friday, July 27, 2007

Millennial Challenges: Keeping Journalists honest in their work in the time of crisis

It is now been two weeks since Mr Gettleman- the terrorist enabler who was thrown out of Ethiopia for his conduct unbecoming of a tourist or journalist for becoming the spokesperson for a regional terrorist group, known as the Altihad-Alqaeda Network has been at the center of the ICRC, HRW aided and abated by Internatinal Herald Tribune and New York Times disinformation camapign aginst the people of the Ogaden, Ethiopia, East Africa.

When did these western organizations become partners in crime with the Althihad-Alqaeda Network is the real question? Do they know what they are doing? who is waging war against United States and Ethiopia? This is basic and they are ignorant and need to be educated and challenged about the basic facts of life?

Please read carefully this interesting story unfolding in the Horn and the New York Times media outfits, where the new frontline of global terrorism is being fought.

Let us keep them honest and accountable all the NGOs, Media and Government agencies and most importantly the incompetent terrorists and their surrogates in Asmara and New York.

This is not a time to wait and see! We need to start a letter writing campaign against ICRC, HRW, New York Times and the International Herald Tribune and their likes who behave in such incompetent and callous way with terrorism.

When terrorirsts strike, they do not have fingerprinting or genetic pool analysis surveys, etc,?

If Mr Gettleman is there at the war front (Ogaden) he will face the same treatment like the rest of the victims. The recent story of American Jewish journalists behaded by the terrorist in Pakistan and the sad film that Angelina Jollie just completed is a reminder for the likes of the foolish Gettelmans of this world.

Rule number one, Mr Gettleman and these editors and ICRC, HRW and New York Times people should watch this film to understand the impact of what they are doing.

Modern terrorists do not like fools like these NGOs and Media group. The war is not with individuals it is with the idea of freedom regardless of your profession, geography or affiliation to Jewish or International Media.

The Horn of Africa and Ethiopia know these terrorists, by name, address, family and associations and a New York rookie who does not know his facts straight but has access to the Media outlet is not going to change the facts onthe ground. Learn your basics first is the real message. If you mess up there are consequences, and it might be your own life and the lives of others you endanger!

The worst crime is behaving as though he is closer to the people of Ogaden than their own families, representatives and their leadership. That is the folly of the whole affairs. Where does this type of flooshness start?

It is trying to be better than the Pope or the Rabi in the Catholic and Jewish tradition.

All the same, facts and evidence should be our only guide. Here is the fact unfolding from the Ethiopipian Embassy briefing in Washington DC.

Watch this space, we need to make these journaists accountable to the end.

with regards and seeking your proactive campaign for the truth; I remain

The NY Times articles referred to in the Statement will be found below.

Source: Ethiopian Embassy in Washington, DC

Statement by the Embassy of Ethiopia on False Reports by the New York Times

WASHINGTON, July 26 /PRNewswire/ -- Articles published today and in theJuly 22nd editions of the New York Times about Ethiopian aid efforts in theOgaden Region were factually inaccurate, the Embassy of the FederalDemocratic Republic of Ethiopia in Washington, DC, said today. The Embassy released this statement by Samuel Assefa, Ethiopia'sAmbassador to the United States:

The reporting was wrong. I can only conclude from the articles byJeffrey Gettleman that he is willing to take the word of a terroristorganization over that of the U.N. World Food Program and thedemocratically elected government of Ethiopia.

We have asked New York Times editor Bill Keller for a full retractionas the false statements and misrepresentations are so severe that they gobeyond simple correction.

The articles' two central claims have been denied not just by theEthiopian government but also by international organizations overseeingthese aid programs.

First, the contention that the Ethiopian government is systematicallyblocking food to the Ogaden has been refuted by the U.N. World FoodProgram, which said the government is allowing food shipments to theregion. Further, the WFP said that its Country Director was quoted out ofcontext in Mr. Gettleman's article.

Second, the allegation that funding was being diverted from a polioprogram was challenged by the UN Office for the Coordination ofHumanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in a statement released Tuesday.

The Times' articles contained an appalling number of unconfirmed rumorsand innuendos. In 20 instances -- including some of the most disturbingallegations -- Mr. Gettleman apparently relied primarily on unnamed sourcesin the article published on the front page of The Times on Sunday.

The article quoted a single unnamed source stating, falsely, "It's astarve-out-the population strategy." That's an astounding and brutalallegation to level under any circumstance and it's simply false. How couldThe Times allow Mr. Gettleman to make this unbelievable allegation from ananonymous source?

In today's report, Mr. Gettleman dispensed even with anonymous sourcesand stated as fact that "the Ethiopian military has recently sealed off[the Ogaden region] in an apparent effort to squeeze a growing rebelmovement there."

This isn't a matter of whether The Times allowed sloppy articles to bepublished.

The most fundamental allegations in the articles were simply wrong andit's egregious that The Times would allow such inflammatory andunsupportable claims to be published.

The facts are as follows:

-- The Ogaden National Liberation Front is a terrorist organization. In April the group slaughtered more than 70 civilian workers, both Ethiopian and Chinese, at a Chinese-run oil field in the Ogaden. (Mr. Gettleman continues to report that soldiers were killed in this attack, which is false.) -- The Ethiopian army is working to facilitate humanitarian food shipments while striving to provide security in a region under attack by the Eritrean-backed ONLF. (AP reported today that: "Eritrea has secretly supplied 'huge quantities of arms' to a Somali insurgent group with alleged ties to al-Qaeda in violation of an international arms embargo and despite the deployment of African peacekeepers, U.N. arms experts have concluded.") -- The Ogaden is one of the impoverished areas of Ethiopia that has frequently suffered food shortages and the government is deeply committed to preventing another such crisis in the context of terrorist activity. -- The UN says the Government of Ethiopia is allowing food aid into the region. -- The WFP Country Director for Ethiopia was quoted out of context in The Times article. The Country Director actually said that food delays were the result of UN processes, not an Ethiopian blockade. -- An interagency UN mission, including OCHA, WFP, and others, is visiting the Ogaden to continue facilitating the distribution of humanitarian relief.

SOURCE Embassy of Ethiopia__________________________________

1. New York Times report published on July 26, 2007: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/26/world/africa/26ethiopia.html

2. New York Times report published on July 22, 2007: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/22/world/africa/22ethiopia.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

1. Deal Near on Food for Sealed Area of Ethiopia

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

Published: July 26, 2007LAMU, Kenya, July 25 — United Nations officials and the Ethiopian government appear to have reached an agreement to allow emergency food aid into a conflict-ridden area that the Ethiopian military has been blockading for several weeks, both sides said on Wednesday.

Courtenay Morris for The New York Times

Villagers in the Ogaden recently counted sacks of grain while rebel fighters watched.

But Ethiopian officials expelled the Red Cross from the same area after accusing its workers of being rebel spies.

According to Nur Abdi Mohammed, a government spokesman, food deliveries will soon begin to most parts of the eastern Ogaden region, which the Ethiopian military has recently sealed off in an apparent effort to squeeze a growing rebel movement there.

“The food distribution has started from the center to different areas,” Mr. Mohammed said. “I think it will reach most places soon. But where there is no security, there will not be deliveries.”

Peter Smerdon, a spokesman for the United Nations’ World Food Program, said that United Nations officials had been meeting with the Ethiopian government for several weeks about access for food aid and that teams had reached most parts of the conflict region to determine how much aid was needed.

“The food is still not there in all the zones, but there is a process under way,” Mr. Smerdon said. “We are working with Ethiopian officials and others on exactly how the food will be dispatched.”

Mr. Smerdon said that with food prices rapidly rising, local markets empty and the flood season beginning next month, there could be a “humanitarian crisis” in some areas unless the military lifted restrictions on food aid and commercial traffic.

The Ogaden is one of the poorest parts of one of the poorest countries, and also the site of an intense insurgency and counterinsurgency.

The most active rebel group in the area, and possibly all of Ethiopia, is the Ogaden National Liberation Front. The government considers it a group of rebel terrorists, especially after members attacked a Chinese oil field in the area in April, killing more than 60 soldiers and Chinese workers. At the same time, human rights groups and villagers say that Ethiopian troops have gang-raped women, burned down villages and tortured civilians.

Several former administrators from the area and a member of Parliament who recently defected have accused the Ethiopian military and its proxy militias of skimming food aid and using a United Nations polio eradication program to funnel money to fighters. The Ethiopian government has denied the accusations and said it was the Ogaden rebels who were stealing food aid and abusing the population. The government has also accused the Front of getting arms and training from Eritrea, Ethiopia’s enemy.

Western diplomats and lawmakers in Congress have expressed concern about Ethiopia’s human rights record. Several measures are moving through the House and Senate that would place strict conditions on assistance to Ethiopia, which receives nearly half a billion dollars in American aid each year.

Western diplomats in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, said their biggest issue was the military blockade, which they said was putting hundreds of thousands of impoverished nomads at risk of starvation. Several humanitarian officials have said that they need to temper their criticisms or not speak publicly so as to prevent their organizations from being permanently blocked from the area.

On Tuesday, regional government officials, who oversee the Ogaden, expelled the Red Cross.

“They were spies,” Mr. Mohammed said. “They were following regional officials and relaying information to the rebels.”

Red Cross officials declined to comment, saying they were still negotiating with the government to find a way to stay. The regional government has given the Red Cross, which runs water and livestock projects in the Ogaden, seven days to leave; its projects in other parts of the country would not be affected.

It seems that the Ethiopian government is increasingly suspicious about foreign involvement in the Ogaden, a desert on the Somali border where most residents are ethnic Somalis and where a separatist movement has brewed for decades.

Mohamed Abdi, an Ethiopian-American working as an interpreter for the American military in the Ogaden, has been held incommunicado and without charges in a prison in eastern Ethiopia since he was arrested in early May. Relatives and American Embassy officials said Mr. Abdi, 45, was working on humanitarian projects in the Ogaden when Ethiopian troops detained him and two American soldiers, who were soon released.

2. Ethiopia Is Said to Block Food to Rebel Region

Courtenay Morris for The New York Times

Villagers in the Ogaden recently counted sacks of grain while rebel fighters watched. The government is accused of blocking food aid to the region.

By JEFFREY GETTLEMANPublished: July 22, 2007NAIROBI, Kenya, July 21 — The Ethiopian government is blockading emergency food aid and choking off trade to large swaths of a remote region in the eastern part of the country that is home to a rebel force, putting hundreds of thousands of people at risk of starvation, Western diplomats and humanitarian officials say.

The New York TimesHundreds of thousands of people may face famine in the Ogaden.

Enlarge This Image

Jeffrey Gettleman/The New York TimesJemal Dirie Kalif, above, in Germany, was a member of Ethiopia’s Parliament who defected to protest the government actions.

The Ethiopian military and its proxy militias have also been siphoning off millions of dollars in international food aid and using a United Nations polio eradication program to funnel money to their fighters, according to relief officials, former Ethiopian government administrators and a member of the Ethiopian Parliament who defected to Germany last month to protest the government’s actions.

The blockade takes aim at the heart of the Ogaden region, a vast desert on the Somali border where the government is struggling against a growing rebellion and where government soldiers have been accused by human rights groups of widespread brutality.

Humanitarian officials say the ban on aid convoys and commercial traffic, intended to squeeze the rebels and dry up their bases of support, has sent food prices skyrocketing and disrupted trade routes, preventing the nomads who live there from selling their livestock. Hundreds of thousands of people are now sealed off in a desiccated, unforgiving landscape that is difficult to survive in even in the best of times.

“Food cannot get in,” said Mohammed Diab, the director of the United Nations World Food Program in Ethiopia.

The Ethiopian government says the blockade covers only strategic locations, and is meant to prevent guns and matériel from reaching the Ogaden National Liberation Front, the rebel force that the government considers a terrorist group. In April, the rebels killed more than 60 Ethiopian guards and Chinese workers at a Chinese-run oil field in the Ogaden.

“This is not a government which punishes its people,” said Nur Abdi Mohammed, a government spokesman.

But Western diplomats have been urging Ethiopian officials to lift the blockade, arguing that the many people in the area are running out of time. “It’s a starve-out-the-population strategy,” said one Western humanitarian official, who did not want to be quoted by name because he feared reprisals against aid workers. “If something isn’t done on the diplomatic front soon, we’re going to have a government-caused famine on our hands.”

The blockade, which involves soldiers and military trucks cutting off the few roads into the central Ogaden, comes as Congress is increasingly concerned about Ethiopia’s human rights record.

Ethiopia is a close American ally and a key partner in America’s counterterrorism efforts in the Horn of Africa, a region that has become a breeding ground for Islamic militants, many of whom have threatened to wage a holy war against Ethiopia.

The country receives nearly half a billion dollars in American aid each year, but this week, a House subcommittee passed a bill that would put strict conditions on some of that aid and ban Ethiopian officials linked to rights abuses from entering the United States. The House also recently passed an amendment, sponsored by J. Randy Forbes, a Virginia Republican, that stripped Ethiopia of $3 million in assistance to “send a strong message that if they don’t wake up and pay attention, more money will be cut,” Mr. Forbes said.

Ethiopia’s pardon on Friday of 30 political prisoners who had been sentenced to life in prison could ease some criticism. But Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, is pushing ahead with measures to more closely vet assistance to the Ethiopian military. According to human rights groups and firsthand accounts, government troops have gang raped women, burned down huts and killed civilians.

American officials in Ethiopia said they were trying to investigate the situation but that the Ogaden was too dangerous right now for a fact-finding mission. American officials said they had heard persistent reports of burned villages and that the blockade was putting the area on the cusp of a crisis.

Villagers say that anyone who criticizes the government risks getting killed. According to Ogaden Online, a Canadian-based news service that has been highly critical of the Ethiopian government and covers the region through a network of reporters and contributors, some equipped with satellite phones, four young men who were videotaped by The New York Times at a community meeting in an Ogaden village in May were later tortured and executed.

The claim could not be fully verified independently, but their identities may have been discovered by Ethiopian soldiers who had arrested three journalists for The Times in the Ogaden and confiscated their notebooks, cameras and computers.

“The army is out of control,” said Jemal Dirie Kalif, the member of Parliament who defected.

The blockade has been in place since early June, and thousands of people have already fled on foot and by camel. Two weeks ago, Abdullahi Mohammed, a 17-year-old student, walked from his village deep in the Ogaden to the nearest town with a bus station. He carried with him a few pieces of bread. He said that when he stopped to ask villagers in the Ogaden for food, they asked him for some instead. “They had nothing,” he said.

Though good rains this year have fed the few crops in the area and provided a little cushion, “The most these people can last without facing serious problems is one month, maybe two,” said David Throp, country director for Save the Children UK.

Even if relief trucks are allowed in to all the critical areas, the food might not reach the people who need it. According to humanitarian workers and several former Ethiopian officials, including Mr. Kalif, food aid is embezzled in two stages. First, soldiers skim sacks of grain, tins of vegetable oil and bricks of high-energy biscuits from food warehouses to sell at local markets.

“The cash is distributed among security officers and regional officers,” a former government administrator from the Ogaden region said in a recent telephone interview on condition of anonymity because he still works with government officials.

Then the remaining food is hauled out to rural areas where the soldiers divert part of it to local gunmen and informers as a reward for helping them fight the rebels. The former administrator said he also knew of specific cases in which army officers stole food from warehouses and gave it to the families of women whom their soldiers had raped, as compensation.

Several Western humanitarian officials estimated that 20 to 30 percent of the donor countries’ food aid to the Ogaden — aid that last year was valued at more than $70 million — routinely disappears this way. To cover their tracks, the soldiers and the government administrators who work with them tell the aid agencies that the food has spoiled, or has been stolen or hijacked by the rebels, humanitarian officials said.

Relief workers in Ethiopia have known about these problems for several years, a humanitarian official said, and have tried to set up committees of local elders to oversee distribution. But that did not work either, and aid officials eventually concluded that as long as the majority of the food was getting through, they would not stop the shipments.

When informed about these allegations, Mr. Diab of the World Food Program said, “This is the first I’ve heard of them.”

Mr. Mohammed, the government spokesman, denied that Ethiopian troops were pilfering or mishandling foreign aid. “We don’t do that,” he said.

As the food crisis looms, Western diplomats are also concerned about a separate plan by the regional government in the Ogaden to divert a share of its own budget for development projects — like schools and farming — to the Ethiopian military.

This seems to be part of the Ethiopian government’s strategy to do whatever it takes to crush the rebels, who have deep popular support and, according to the government, are getting arms and training from neighboring Eritrea, Ethiopia’s bitter enemy.

The people of the Ogaden are mostly Somalis and ethnically distinct from the highland Ethiopians who have ruled the country for centuries, and the long battle over the region has been steadily escalating this year. The country director of one Western aid agency, who recently returned from a field visit there, said he saw two villages that had been burned to the ground and several schools that had been converted into military bases, with foxholes.

Humanitarian officials say the military is building up militias and setting the stage for clan-based bloodshed. The rank and file of the Ogaden National Liberation Front tend to be members of the Ogaden clan, and so the government has turned to other clans to form anti-rebel militias. In the past few weeks, thousands of men have been armed.

“Those Ethiopians are smart,” Mr. Kalif, 32, said. “They know Somalis are more loyal to clans than anything else.” Tactics like these, he said, drove him to defect June 20 while attending a conference in Wiesbaden, Germany. He was affiliated with the ruling party, and had been representing an area in the eastern Ogaden for the past seven years.

He described a scheme with a United Nations polio program, which was corroborated by two former administrators in the Ethiopian government and a Western humanitarian official, in which military commanders gave prized jobs as vaccinators to militia fighters, and in the end, much of the polio vaccine was never distributed.

“Army commanders are using the polio money to pay their people, who don’t pass out the vaccines, so the disease continues and the payments continue,” said Mr. Kalif. “It’s the perfect system.” United Nations officials in Geneva said they did not know whether that was happening, but that they would investigate.

When asked how he knew about the polio scheme, Mr. Kalif said: “Everybody out there knows. They’re just too scared to talk.”

“If I don’t get asylum and they send me back to my country, I’m dead,” he added. “But I was sick of being a parrot. I have no regrets.”

Will Connors contributed reporting from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Here is the fan club of Diaspora militants supporting Gettleman.

Now I see where he gets his moral support and information network. Just imagine Gettleman replacing Anthony Mitchel and wanting to be a martyr like the recent Angelina Jolie movie.

Unfortunately this one is supporting terrorists and his movie will be aired may be in Algezeera and Alqaeda Distribution Network.

All the same, read below the story from Ethiomedia's perspective. We seem to be living in different planets.Viewpoint Jeffrey Gettleman: Journalist par excellence By Selam Beyene (Ph.D.) July 26, 2007

Jeffrey Gettleman (Photo: Frank DiMeo/Cornell University) In a series of articles1,2 published in the New York Times, Jeffrey Gettleman shocked the world with a glimpse of the atrocities committed by Zenawi's regime against the people of Ethiopia. In so doing, Gettleman not only demonstrated journalistic professionalism of the highest order, but also provided uncommon comfort to the 70 million Ethiopians suffering under Zenawi's iron rule. Through a powerful exposition of the brutality of Zenawi and his deceits of the donor community, Gettleman declared: "The Ethiopian military and its proxy militias have ... been siphoning off millions of dollars in food aid and using a U.N. polio eradication program to funnel money to their fighters..."2.

What support can one give to such an admirable journalist, who is owed so much by the people of Ethiopia, so that his efforts will not be in vain?

The answer may not be difficult. All genuine Ethiopians should express their gratitude for his Herculean efforts, and provide him with much needed information that exposes the brutality of Zenawi's regime not just in the Ogaden region, but throughout the country.

Gettleman's efforts would bear fruit, and the struggle to free the oppressed people of Ethiopia would be successful, only if the true picture of Zenawi's regime is presented in the proper perspective, without falling in the dangerous ethnic traps that the dictator has wickedly installed for us.

When Zenawi directed one of his attack dogs, Seyoum Mesfin, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, to respond to the first of Gettleman's reports3, the motive was to divert the focus of the discussion from the absence of human rights and democracy to one concerning the rise of one ethnic group against the rest of "Ethiopia".

While fully sharing the pains of our Ogaden compatriots, as we do collectively share the pains suffered by all other ethnic groups across the land, we should guard against the tendency to fall victims to Zenawi's ethnic politics by treating the movements to overthrow Zenawi's dictatorship as isolated movements of disparate ethnic groups against the motherland.

A movement against Zenawi's oppression cannot have a lasting democratic outcome, if it is anchored in an ethnic agenda. The memory is still fresh that less than two decades ago the ethnicbased movements that overthrew the dictatorship of Mengistu Haile Mariam only brought us equally vicious dictators in the likes of Zenawi and Afewerki.

So, as we applaud Gettleman for his courage, integrity and objectivity in exposing the brutal nature of Zenawi's dictatorship, let's provide our support to him so that he will be better equipped with comprehensive knowledge to more effectively use the power of the New York Times toward the search for a more permanent and lasting solution to the suffering of all Ethiopians: from the Somalis and Afars in the lowlands to the Oromos, Amharas, Gurages and Tigreans of the highlands; and from the Anuaks of the West to the numerous oppressed people of the South. Interestingly, Gettleman's reports could not have come at a worse time for the brutal dictator, who is cornered like a wounded and dangerous beast with no place to escape:

At home, he is vilified and humiliated, having been rejected on May 15, 2005 by the people of Ethiopia in a vote of no confidence against his dictatorial and ethnic-based minority regime. Abroad, he is considered persona non grata, even by his once-ardent supporters, having been found responsible, by a commission set up by his own government, for the massacre of over 193 peaceful demonstrators and the arrests and torture of thousands of opposition party members4. As recently as July 19, 2007, a U.S. congressional panel approved legislation aimed at supporting democracy and human rights in Ethiopia, and sent the bill to the House Foreign Affairs Committee5 His army is bogged down in a protracted war in Somalia ? a country he attacked although it had posed no tangible danger to the security of Ethiopia. Despite the billions of dollars poured into his coffers by donor nations, the economy is in shambles, thanks to blatant nepotism, corruption and mismanagement. According to a recent report6, the number of Ethiopians living on less than a dollar a day, has nearly tripled since Zenawi took power in 1991 ? a shameful record, especially given the baseline is the discredited regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam. Across the land, the flames of inter-ethnic discord he once fanned for the purpose of weakening the Ethiopian nationhood have gone out of his control and are spreading like a wildfire, rapidly engulfing him. What is the response of the desperate dictator, as the noose is tightening around him from all directions?

True to his roots, Zenawi copied Stalin's formula for the Great Purge, coerced the political prisoners, and forced them to accept accountability for the crimes he committed against humanity.

In his petty mind, the move was intended to serve several purposes:

The document bearing the signatures of the political prisoners would serve as a defense against the inevitable charge for crimes against humanity. The release of the opposition leaders, whose only crime is to have been elected by the people of Ethiopia, would serve to placate donor countries, who have withheld much needed money to finance Zenawi's repressive machinery and to fatten his overseas bank accounts7. The move is also intended to thwart the ongoing congressional activities in the US to hold the regime accountable for human rights violations. Most importantly, the alleged confessions and subsequent release of the political prisoners would help to divert attention from the dreaded issue of the illegitimacy of Zenawi’s government. However, a careful evaluation of the recent unfolding events suggests that Zenawi's wishful thinking has no traction. No credible legal expert would believe that the documents signed under duress by the political prisoners would hold water in a court of law. Despite expensive lobbying8, the plan to thwart the ongoing congressional activities has also backfired, and Congressman Payne has already declared that he’d still demand that “the killers of the 193 innocent civilians" be held accountable9.

Thus, given Zenawi's desperate situation, and the abundance of support for the democratic movement, what is the optimal course of action for the opposition?

All genuine Ethiopians in the Diaspora and back home should now seize the moment and keep the pressure on Zenawi. They should set aside their personal, ethnic and political differences, and pool their resources to address the critical questions of the day:

the return of political power to the legitimate leaders chosen by the people on May 15, 2005, and the prosecution of the criminals responsible for the post-election massacre of peaceful demonstrators, for the unjust imprisonment and torture of opposition members, and for the genocide of Anuaks and other ethnic groups. July 24, 2007 beyene50@gmail.com

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I.We are accountable to our audiences and will deal fairly and openly with them.

II.Their continuing trust in the GCC is a crucial part of our relationship with them.

III.We will be open in acknowledging mistakes when they are made and encourage a culture of willingness to learn from them.

13.Editorial values

I.The GCC's Editorial Values, and the Editorial Guidelines, are rooted in the Governing Board Charter and the Agreement.

II.The Governing Board Charter guarantees the editorial independence of the GCC and sets out its Public Purposes. These are defined as:

a.Sustaining global citizenship and civil society with a focus on Ethiopia, AU, EU & USA and the larger Diaspora communities across the world.

b.Promoting education and learning, investment and sustainable development

c.Stimulating creativity and cultural excellence and business entrepreneurship

d.Representing the Board, its executives and its membership around the world, nations, regions and communities

e.Bringing the Audience to the world and the world to our audiences.

III.Advancing modern communication technologies. We actively promote modern communication technologies and its other purposes, helping to deliver to the public the benefit of emerging communications technologies and services and, in addition, taking a leading role in the switchover to digital radio, internet and television broadcasts.

14. The charter specifies that we should do all we can "to ensure that controversial subjects are treated with due accuracy and impartiality" in our news and other output dealing with matters of public policy or political or industrial controversy.

I.It also states that our output is forbidden from expressing the opinion of the GCC on current affairs or matters of public policy, other than broadcasting or the provision of online services.

II.The Accuracy, Impartiality and Politics, Public Policy and Polls sections of the Editorial Guidelines incorporate the GCC Trust's code as required under Paragraph the Agreement, giving guidance as to the rules to be observed in connection with the Agreement.

15. Advertisements and Sponsorship

In addition, the agreement forbids any GCC service funded by the license fee or grant-in-aid from carrying advertising or sponsored programs. To protect editorial integrity and independence, the GCC has drawn up its own guidelines on standards for advertising and sponsorship for its commercial television and online services.

16. GCC is a US registered and Washington DC based organization and part of Global Connect Network and Global Strategic Enterprises, Inc, that promote sustainable development and creative investments across the globe.